Australian loses bid to refuse blood

SYDNEY: An Australian teenager lost his court battle to refuse life-saving medical treatment because he is a Jehovah’s Witness, with a court upholding an earlier judgment permitting a blood transfusion.

The 17-year-old, who suffers from an aggressive cancer, lost his case against Sydney Children’s Hospital in March in which he had argued that treating him with blood products or a transfusion would breach his relationship with God.

Justice John Basten said there was no reason why a different result should be achieved just because the applicant was now closer to his 18th birthday, which is in January, and at which point he can exercise his right to refuse treatment.

“The interest of the state is in keeping him alive until that time, after which he will be free to make

The interest of the state is in keeping him alive until that time, after which he will be free to make his own decisions as to medical treatment. — JUSTICE JOHN BASTEN

his own decisions as to medical treatment,” he wrote.

The teenager, who suffers from Hodgkin’s disease, initially had several bouts of chemotherapy which achieved only a limited reduction in the size of many tumours.

His doctors recommended higher doses of different chemotherapy agents, ones which carried the inevitable side effect of anaemia and by February this year severe anaemia had set in, requiring either a blood transfusion or a cessation of treatment.

Advice was that he had an 80% chance of dying from anaemia without receiving a blood transfusion – a treatment which goes against the beliefs of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

The appeal judgement noted that while the boy’s parents had also refused to consent to any treatment involving a blood transfusion, he was a “mature minor” with an understanding of his own condition.

However, it ultimately supported the decision of the first judge to allow treatment. — AFP